Air

"EPA and indoor air quality experts are pushing ventilation and filtration as a key means to keep kids healthy during the pandemic as other measures to stop the spread of Covid-19 have become increasingly polarized."

"In a new draft document, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) science advisers recommended that the agency tighten its air quality standards for soot pollution after the Trump administration declined to make such a move.

The new draft that was released Friday by the EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) says “all CASAC members agree that the current level of the annual standard is not sufficiently protective of public health and should be lowered.”

"About 86 percent of people living in urban areas worldwide — 2.5 billion people — are being exposed to air pollution levels roughly seven times greater than World Health Organization guidelines, according to new research, led by George Washington University researchers and published in the Lancet Planetary Health journal."

"Biden administration officials are kicking off a crackdown on power plant pollution, aiming to shift the nation’s electricity supply to cleaner energy in the face of congressional resistance and a Supreme Court that could limit the federal government’s ability to tighten public health standards."

"Community groups in New Jersey and California are suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, seeking to force trash incinerators across the country — many of them in predominantly minority communities — to emit less pollution into the air."

"Gas stoves are contributing more to global warming than previously thought because of constant tiny methane leaks while they’re off, a new study found."

"The researchers studied more than 15 million Medicare beneficiaries living in all major fracking regions and gathered data from more than 2.5 million oil and gas wells."

"Older Americans who regularly breathe even low levels of pollution from smokestacks, automobile exhaust, wildfires and other sources face a greater chance of dying early, according to a major study released Wednesday."

"Around 30 oil and gas facilities across the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico spewed large amounts of methane for three years, emitting the equivalent annual climate pollution from half a million cars, according to a report released on Monday."

"With less than two weeks to go until the Opening Ceremonies of the Beijing Winter Olympics, the Chinese government said it is battling “extremely unfavorable” weather to clear the city’s skies of hazardous smog."